Suspension of time.
I live in this moment.
Not exactly the past.
Certainly not the future.
This moment.

On this Sunday before Thanksgiving I pull all of you into the cloak of my life...my stories. I wish I could open my door and see a parade of family and friends stretching as far as the eye could see walking towards my doorstep..as is I will just open wide my door and send my Sunday Passage out to you.

I currently sit in my dining room with the last of the Sunday sunshine pouring through the window crystals...Jonathan apples are piled into a lovely handmade pottery bowl and candles give off their romantic light and scent. Stories, and parts of them, flood my memory this lazy Sunday.

When we were kids we spent Thanksgiving at my Uncle's. The men hunted, I think. They didn't wear the traditional look of today's hunters (my sons) but wore the red and black plaid. I wonder if they ever brought anything home? I don't remember that. The women stayed back to cook and baste. I was just a kid and didn't have to participate in the grown up activities for a long time.
I remember the year I moved from the kid's table to the grown up table. I was not at all flattered. I think I even cried. The rites of passage in America on Thanksgiving...moving tables.

The years at the farm are etched into my mind. Thanksgiving. Everyone gathered at the farmhouse. I cooked on my wonderful old wood cook stove then.
That old stove made the best pies and turkey. I learned by trial and error...many errors. The boys hand many chores to do...gathering potatoes and squash from the root cellar, eggs from the hen house, more wood for the stoves, apples from the bin, shell hickory nuts for cookies. They were young too. Their clothes weren't much to speak of as there just wasn't money for anything new. We didn't care. Our Thanksgiving dinner was from what we had planted and grown and raised on the farm....everything including the candles on the table and the mittens the boys wore. It was a sweet time in life. I can only be glad that I lived it once upon a time.

Thanksgiving was the only Holiday I worried about after my divorce. Will my boys come home to me? Where will home be? Where will my home be? My father said they will...he is so wise. He told me that home is where love lives and love lives in us... not in the walls we paint or even the gardens we grow. So they come home. Adam and Tonya came last Friday night, and I go to sleep at night knowing they are safe under my roof. I like waking up in the night knowing they are here. Abe and Kristin cannot make it this year. It is the first year we have not all been together. It is hard, I miss them so. Mothers need to see her children together.

Philip will be here. His plane arrives in just a few hours, and I will stand at the gate and welcome him home to me...home is where love lives. We have lots of plans...for one week it will be all family plans. The boys even have plans for him (?), but Philip will fit in...will pitch in..will listen to our stories and add those of his own.

My Thanksgiving table will be a suspension in time..the sum of our parts..fragmented and whole stories. I wish the same for you.

Love to all,
Lou Ann